"You do," Madame Fontaine rejoined, just as sharply on her side. "Mr. Keller fell ill, as anyone else might fall ill. Nobody poisoned him."
Jack got on his legs. For the moment he actually forgot the cake. "Nobody?" he repeated. "Tell me this, if you please: Wasn't Mr. Keller cured out of the blue-glass bottle—like me?"
(Who had told him this? Joseph might have told him; Minna might have told him. It was no time for inquiry; the one thing needful was to eradicate the idea from his mind. She answered boldly, "Quite right, so far"—and waited to see what came of it.)
"Very well," said Jack, "Mr. Keller was cured out of the blue-glass bottle, like me. And I was poisoned. Now?"
She flatly contradicted him again. "You were not poisoned!"
Jack crossed the room, with a flash of the old Bedlam light in his eyes, and confronted her at the fire place. "The devil is the father of lies," he said, lifting his hand solemnly. "No lies! I heard my master the Doctor say I was poisoned."
She was ready with her answer. "Your master the Doctor said that to frighten you. He didn't want you to taste his medicines in his absence again. You drank double what any person ought to have drunk, you greedy Jack, when you tasted that pretty violet-colored medicine in your master's workshop. And you had yourself to thank—not poison, when you fell ill."
Jack looked hard at her. He could reason so far as that he and Mr. Keller must have taken the same poison, because he and Mr. Keller had been cured out of the same bottle. But to premise that he had been made ill by an overdose of medicine, and that Mr. Keller had been made ill in some other way, and then to ask, how two different illnesses could both have been cured by the same remedy—was an effort utterly beyond him. He hung his head sadly, and went back to the table.
"I wish I hadn't asked you about it," he said. "You puzzle me horribly." But for that unendurable sense of perplexity, he would still have doubted and distrusted her as resolutely as ever. As it was, his bewildered mind unconsciously took its refuge in belief. "If it was medicine," asked the poor creature vacantly, "what is the medicine good for?"
At those words, an idea of the devil's own prompting entered Madame Fontaine's mind. Still standing at the fireplace, she turned her head slowly, and looked at the cupboard.